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If you can handle the inordinate amount of wind that passes over this land, the blistering cold, and the sweltering hot, Millennium Park is one of the best places to enjoy some outdoor entertainment, architecture, and art.

Millennium Park was originally conceived as a way to celebrate the coming of the second millennium (and perhaps the whole Y2K thing being a hoax). Unfortunately for the city of Chicago, construction was delayed on the park and rather than opening in 2000, as would have been fitting, it did not open until 2004. In addition to the delays, the estimated price to construct the park may have been a little off as well. Originally budgeted to cost $150 million, the park ended up costing city taxpayers and private donors a whopping $490 million.

Besides being a celebration of the turn of the millennium, a new park was the perfect way to rid the city of its unsightly railroad tracks and parking lots that once inhabited this land. Rumor has it that the mayor at the time, Richard M. Daley, dentist's office had a view of the area that would one day become Millennium Park, and he hated having to look at the decrepit land so much that he set out to turn it around, and presumably had pearly whites while doing so.

The park spans 24.5 acres and kisses the shoreline of Lake Michigan, and features everything from an ice skating rink to world renowned public art to an impromptu water park and even has a pavilion designed by architect Frank Gehry, who at the time of creation was dubbed “the hottest architect in the universe” by the Chicago Tribune. With an estimated 3 million visitors each year, it is no surprise that this is one of the most esteemed parks in the United States. Good job Chicago for celebrating the turn of the millennium with such pizzazz!

Some observers consider Millennium Park the city's most important project since the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. It far exceeded its originally proposed budget of $150 million. The final cost of $475 million was borne by Chicago taxpayers and private donors. The city paid $270 million; private donors paid the rest, and assumed roughly half of the financial responsibility for the cost overruns. The construction delays and cost overruns were attributed to poor planning, many design changes, and cronyism. Many critics have praised the completed park.

In 2017, Millennium Park was the top tourist destination in Chicago and the Midwest, and placed among the top ten in the United States with 25 million annual visitors.